


Nervous

by USS_Enterprise



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Deaf Jim, Gen, HoH!Jim, Medical Conditions, Medical Inaccuracies, Neuropathy, Sign Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 10:27:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9436082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/USS_Enterprise/pseuds/USS_Enterprise
Summary: James Tiberius Kirk was born with a rare condition that affected his nerves. It centered around the last two fingers on his right hand, occasionally spreading up to his elbow for a few hours to a couple days and rarely reaching up to the shoulder and his left thigh which sometimes includes the hip. It also affects the auditory nerves in both his ears, resulting in seemingly random fluctuating hearing loss between 65 and 100%, and not always equal on both sides. They call it idiopathic neuropathy and tell him he's lucky it's not worse.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know that there are inaccuracies here, both in procedure and the condition itself. But, as history will show not only medical procedure changes over the years, but so do the conditions that doctors must treat.

James Tiberius Kirk was born with a rare condition that affected his nerves. It centered around the last two fingers on his right hand, occasionally spreading up to his elbow for a few hours to a couple days and rarely reaching up to the shoulder and his left thigh which sometimes includes the hip. It also affects the auditory nerves in both his ears, resulting in seemingly random fluctuating hearing loss between 65 and 100%, and not always equal on both sides. They call it idiopathic neuropathy and tell him he's lucky it's not worse.

         The day Pike finds him in the bar is a bad day, his entire right arm is numb (and it's not the tingling numbness that you can feel, his arm is just...not there, it's how his nerves work), and he woke up with so little of his hearing that he hadn't been able to turn his hearing aids up high enough to do anything. His leg is good though, only numb where it normally is. The thing is though, it doesn't bother him, it's been a thing his whole life. All the way back to when he was 5 and starting school and being the weird kid who talked a little funny. He talks a lot funny now because he gave up on speech therapy when he was like 8. The 7 year old with the broken arm who didn't know until his nerves decided to turn back on in the middle of the night. He's lucky though, he could have a variation of the disorder that induces random pain instead of just numbness. So he's damn near completely deaf when Pike finds him on the bar, drooling on himself and bleeding. He sees the words on Pikes lips (because he was having a shitty day at the yard and his glasses broke, the ones that caught maybe every 3rd word and projected them onto the lenses). He understood more just by reading lips most days. Star fleet was once a dream, and then his mother, and his uncle and his step father had crushed it. He couldn't be Star fleet if he couldn't feel, and more so, if he couldn't hear. So when Pike brings it up, Jim figures he doesn't know, so he makes sure when he talks it doesn't just sound like he's drunk, he fucks up speech sounds he knows how to make just to tell Pike he can't be Star fleet.

         "You think I don't know about that? The nerve disorder that renders you deaf, sometimes hard of hearing? James I know all about you." He catches about 50% of what Pike says, mostly the important parts. "My offer still stands." It's the first time since he gave up speech therapy (because what was the point if he'd still be treated differently even if he talked right) that he thinks maybe he can be the person everyone wants him to be.

        

       The next morning he wakes up and spends the 10 minutes tuning his hearing aids (because today was good on that front, he could almost make out the radio without them if he listened hard enough) before speeding off on his bike.

         The doctor on the shuttle knows the second he opens his big mouth, and responds to Jim's slurred words with hand motions that he's intimately familiar with. Bones knows Common Sign Language (a combination of ASL and BSL that had been developed to create a more cohesive language system about 150 years ago). Jim only knows a hand full of people who know CSL, and he smiles a real smile as he responds with a 'yeah I'm deaf but today I'm hard of hearing'. And the doctor in McCoy is intrigued. When it comes time for rooming assignments the only trade that goes through is Kirk and McCoy, one stating 'he knows sign language' and the other simply putting 'he's the deaf one'. Leonard learns that Jim prefers to not use his hearing aids but recognizes their importance, and that he gets really frustrated when people can't understand him and vice versa. Jim learns that Leonard knows CSL because he has a rare medical certificate that required it, and has said rare certificate because his own mother was unilaterally deaf, but implant eligible (unlike Jim). Bones learns how to understand Jim's awkward speech, and Jim gets better at figuring out Bones and his Georgian slang.

         McCoy is the one to figure out why Kirk is failing 2 classes (well not failing failing but he's close to being dropped from command track engineering to standard engineering with the 'c-' grades). They're presentation based classes, and while he understands the concepts and the lecture material just fine, when it comes time for the presentations, no matter how well written his power point is, or how practiced he is at it he always gets a 50% or lower on the assignment.

         "Let me see the two syllabus files for your issue classes." Jim's having a good day with his ears, so Bones just says it as he waves he PADD around slightly. They pop up on his screen and Jim raises an eyebrow at the doctor as he reads through the point breakdowns. "I figured out why you're having trouble in those." And Jim's not going to like it. "Jim, 50% of each assignment is based on tone and projection as well as confidence."

       "So...I'm failing out because I don't talk right." He looks dejected.

       "Which is ridiculous because your speech isn't that bad." McCoy is fairly certain Jim thinks it's worse than it really is. "Yes, you have an accent and it's a little difficult to understand you sometimes or with certain words, but it's not unintelligible."

         "What do I do? Just let them change my career path, or...?" He shrugs and throws his hands in the air before dropping them dramatically, the right just barely clipping the desk on the way down, which Kirk seems not to notice, which means it's not just his fingers not feeling today.

         "Talk to Pike, you aren't having problems with the material, and the only time you can't figure out the lectures is when you're at almost 0% hearing, which you've got a way around. It's asinine to fail you for that, you can't control the fact that you can't hear, so you don't talk quite right." Bones knows that Jim is pretty insecure about a few things, his hearing being a big one.

           "Okay. You sure I don't talk too funny, because maybe you just understand better since you know me?" Bones shakes his head, he really isn't that hard to understand.

\----------------------

 

         "Bones...could you interpret for me please?" Kirk goes from following the conversation just fine to looking lost as hell in the space of a minute, meaning his current level of hearing just dropped, probably significantly. "Thank you." He hates having to ask for help, for people to slow down their speech, to face him when they talk. For Bones to interpret. "Here's the thing, I know the material, very well in fact, as is shown by my test scores, and the fact that of all the presentations given this term I have only ever lost points due to what this instructor marked as 'unconfident and monotone speech with multiple grammatical errors interspersed with sections of unintelligible noise'." He reads it from the paper in front of him. "He is failing me because I have an accent." Damn is Jim happy he asked Bones to tag along to his meeting with Pike. "He isn't failing any of the xeno's though, when they have the same thing going on."

       "You have a fairly significant speech impediment, which in the reason he's giving to your grade in the class. It's an excuse, he doesn't want George Kirk's son to pass, to be who you are Jim. He's using your disability as reasoning for it not to be favoritism." McCoy's hands fly into the words. "But, there is reason to find a solution, which I am prepared to offer you." Bones pauses, more of a hesitation really. "Either A: you attend sessions with a speech therapist twice a week for the rest of the year or until your verbal skills have improved to satisfactory levels or B: you get the implant that you were supposed to get 20 years ago."

         "An implant won't fix my words, or my hearing. Because of the cause of my hearing loss, the underlying nerve disorder, the implants used to correct both unilateral and bilateral deafness incurred at birth or after will not help me at all, they might even in fact make it worse, because some days, my hearing is just bad...not nonexistent." They were gonna try to fix him a long time ago. "I guess it's option A, but what happens to my grades?" Lower than a c+ and he's out of command track.

         "They stay the same but I don't push you back." Pike gives a half shrug. "You're smart Jim, ridiculously so, but you are going to have to prove it 10X more than anyone else at this academy, do it in 3 years, show Captain James that people understand you just fine when they're taking orders."

 

       He hates speech therapy but if it keeps him in command track then he'll bare it. He ends up stuck in it for the rest of the year and the first half of the next. Every Tuesday and Thursday night at 2000 he goes off campus to the San Francisco medical building and spends a half hour to 45 minutes learning how to make certain speech sounds that once upon a time he probably could, but had since gotten too lazy to recall. Then he comes back and bitches to Bones about it for a few hours (always in CSL, because the speech therapist says he needs to stop relying on nonverbal cues and gestures and Jim is against that).

 

         Then he tries the Kobiashi Maru, and Captain James (part of the reason Jim hates being called James) from that first year class is standing there next to Mr. Clark (the other teacher who failed him for speech related reasons) and a third of the way through the test he losses his left ear and his shoulder at the same time (which while rare does happen sometimes) but no one besides Bones is any wiser, and he gives orders, never having to repeat himself even once.

           The second time he takes it for once in his freaking life his nerves are agreeing and not being weird (only the always numb spots are numb and his hearing aids are on the lowest setting he has programmed on them) and they stay that way through out the exercise, although Jim is so pissed off about losing again that he ends up breaking his hand (the right one, he always hits with the fucked up one) on the wall in the hallway. And since only the fingers are numb he feels the fracture almost immediately (which was the point but still).

           The third time he goes in knowing exactly what to do, when reason and he asks very specific people to be his crew for that run through, after arguing with an instructor to allow him the third try in the first place. It's a bad day, nearly his whole left leg is numb, most of the affected arm as well and his hearing is at absolutely fuck all zero (which scares him because the worse days are getting more frequent and he has no idea if that means anything or not, is he getting worse? because he can deal with a numb hand, or a numb hip, but he needs his hearing at least occasionally). So not only does he beat the Maru, but he beats the Maru at the absolute worst his preexisting condition gets, while eating an apple (the inside joke being that Bones always says he talks better when he's eating , so he's thinking about how to talk around it).

 

         Ironically during his hearing he can't hear anything. And then he doesn't get an assignment, knows because of Bones that he didn't just miss it. He's lucky that he keeps his hearing aids in his pocket, because when he wakes up with 'lightning storms in space' it's the first time in three days he's heard his voice. And for some godforsaken reason, when he's fighting with a broken wrist, he regains feeling in nearly all of his right arm, but hey, at least he can kinda hear. He fights through it, Bones patches him up afterwards, it's okay. And then he goes and breaks it again.

           The Nero incident ends, Kirk refuses to go to medbay, saying he needs to stay on the bridge, it's his ship dammit. Bones is busy dealing with the injuries down there, so it'll take at least a while for him to notice Jim is absent when he shouldn't be. He's on the bridge, shallow breaths around cracked ribs and a throat that feels nearly swollen shut. When he stands his head rushes and he needs to sit back down, Uhura leaning over so he can see her sign 'Kirk, go down to medbay or I'm calling Dr. McCoy up here'.

         "I'm fine." It's a little hard to talk, but Bones is busy and he's not hurt too bad.

         "No you aren't." He can almost read it on her lips, can almost tell what she's saying even though his head is pounding so hard he took his hearing aids out the minute he was back on board of the ship. He stands up again, just to prove that he is fine and the next thing he knows is pain, blossoming from everywhere as he crashes to the floor, spasms wretch through his back unexpededly and the world fades to black, everything hurts (maybe even the places that can't feel).

 

         He wakes up in medbay, and it's not the slowly blinking daze he'd like to come to with, it's the jolting terrifying kind of waking up that comes from that stupid falling sensation. He sits up, or more so, he tries to before the crushing weight on his chest and a semi gentle hand on his shoulder force him back down. He's pulling air in through his teeth... he shouldn't hurt this bad.

         "Jim, look at me." It's Bones, he knows that voice. "I had to give you a nerve stimulator to figure out if you were in pain or not, I'm sorry, but the scans weren't helping and your body was freaking out." His eyes meet Bones and he realizes the familiar weight is gone from his ears, but he can tell what Bones is saying. "It's temporary okay, you'll be back to being yourself in a few minutes I'm so sorry Jim." He knows what Bones did now. There's a chemical that when injected into a patient with the neropathic condition Jim is afflicted by overrides the signals that block the nerves from working. He's not entirely sure how it works, but he was once tortured using it. His nerves feel like they're on fire. "You had a seizure and when I ran the initial scan it was showing nothing, your nerves shut off...more than you've ever had go down before I think. There was toxin in the hengarugi venom in your back, that's why your chest is tight, it's a paralytic." There's a hypo at his neck...100X more painful than it should be, the chemical making every little touch feel like he's being stabbed. He tries not to groan or whimper or anything, but the world is LOUD and confusing and he doesn't really know what's going on aside from his arm is screaming bloody murder at him and his ribs still ache and HE CAN FUCKING HEAR but for some reason that hurts (and he knows it'll be better after the chemical wears off after whatever bones just did is finished).

         The next time he wakes up the first thing he notices is the absence of noise. He let's out a little thankful sigh at the realization, feeling a slight twinge from his ribs but nothing spectacular. A quick tensing of his right arm is met with deep lances of pain, meaning that hasn't been hit with any machines yet but that's okay. He opens his eyes and blinks in the bright light of medbay, looking over to see an obviously exhausted Bones fighting his eyelids on a roller stool not 5 feet away.

         "Go to bed Bones." He's probably slurring really badly.

         "Not until all your results come back." Thank god McCoy can sign, it makes it a million times easier for them to communicate. "You doing alright?"

         "I'm good. My ears hurt." Which is really odd.

         "You're concussed. Also, one of your hearing aids blew up in you ear canal, so it's a little torn up in there." Bones rubs a hand over his face. "Jim...I'm so sorry about using the simulator, I know I promised never to do that to you." And he had.

         "It's okay, I know why you did it. It's fine Bones, and that shit wears off." It had by now, and he knew Bones had a good reason.

         "I don't know why I did, why I didn't just do a visual assessment to check you over, why I didn't just inject an anti paralytic and then figure it out."

         "You grabbed the hypo all your medical books tell you too. It's not the first time I've been hit with it, you are not the only doctor to be presented with a patient who suffers from known cause or idiopathic neuropathy who, with a standard tricorder, is showing increased or nonexistent area pain readings. It was the quickest way to figure it out. And it's what you were taught to do." Of course, Jim's had the chemical a few extra times, just so someone could watch him squirm.

       "But Jim, I promised to never do that to you. Never to turn on all your nerve receptors at once, to induce that kind of pain..." Bones looks distraught, and Kirk pushes himself up until he's sitting all the way up.

         "And you know that pain can't be remembered. Bones, I'm fine, I'm not mad, and I absolutely do not blame you for injecting me." He doesn't. It is okay, Jim understands why his friend did it, and its over now, except the pain that the injection was able to pinpoint. "Go to sleep Bones, its been what? 3 days since you got a full night? You're always telling me I need to , so go."

         "As soon as I know for sure you're okay."

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------


End file.
